MSNBC posted a Nov. 4 video advertising the network’s My Source for News, Opinion, and the World (MS NOW) rebrand, featuring black actors portraying regular Americans interspliced around the network’s mostly Caucasian anchors, The Washington Free Beacon reported on Tuesday.
MSNBC will officially rebrand to MS NOW on Nov. 15. The video is narrated by network anchor Rachel Maddow, who reads the U.S. Constitution, with the Beacon reporting the ad is likely an appeal to the network’s substantial black audience amid its largely Caucasian team of anchors.
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MSNBC was the top cable news network for black Americans, the network reported in April. The video features footage of Martin Luther King Jr., protests, the Statue of Liberty and shots of the actors and anchors among other visuals as Maddow narrates.
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America,” Maddow says in the video. “We the free, we the proud, we the brave, we the people.”
The network does not disclose the use of actors in the video, as the Beacon found, identifying them as Alex Mason, Shekaya Sky McCarthy and Marcel Noel.
Mason and Noel are both veteran actors in commercials for companies like ZipRecruiter, KFC, Target and Allstate, the Beacon reported. McCarthy appears to be a comedic actress, based on her IMDB page.
Moreover, MSNBC’s video includes a black woman donning a military uniform while hugging her child. The Beacon reports they seem to be actors, but it was unable to identify them.
Caucasian anchors Lawrence O’Donnell, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Jen Psaki, Chris Hayes, Stephanie Ruhle, Ari Melber and Nicolle Wallace are all featured in the video. Black anchors Michael Steele and Symone Sanders are also featured.
MSNBC did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Along with the name change, MSNBC will also lose its peacock brand logo.
Moreover, the network canceled former black anchor Joy Reid’s primetime program, “The ReidOut,” in February.
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